Funding needed for live ex message: Setter

Mr Setter, with a wealth of experience in the live export industry, including a Live Exporter of the Year title, behind him, told the breakfast audience that member organisations need to work out how to fund the cattle industry’s live export message.

“I agree, the billboards and taxi messages calling for bans are a huge challenge,” he said.

“People land in our country and see this, and they don’t believe our message, that we want them.”

His answer was member organisations with the right capacity, strong leadership and the ability to fund the message.

“We don’t have shock and awe advocacy – we need to work out how to fund our message.”

In addition, Mr Setter told industry lobby groups to stop going round in circles and get runs on the board, if they wanted to attract strong leaders.

“This grass-fed restructure for example – people are tired of it.

“You’ve got to get things done, such as the launch of the True Aussie brand.

“People will sign up if they see you getting things done.”

While not throwing his weight behind any particular international branding concept, he said that if True Aussie were the chosen one, his company would get behind it.

“There are so many Brands Australia overseas; it’s quite confusing.

“Whatever we decide, it needs traceability, to represent multiple types of food, and to show care, to work.”

CPC CEO Troy Setter said Terra Firma would look be looking over fence at Kidman properties, at @RuralPressClub #QCL pic.twitter.com/QW4T9qFGWA

CPCs Troy Setter says industry needs meat processing, production, freight & logistics working together. #BeefAus15 #qclnews #ruralpressclub

His prediction that the industry would see cattle prices break the $5/kg barrier was a double-edged sword for the company with fingers in the lot feeding pie in Indonesia.

As an importer, he said a price of $4/kg would have an impact on their business there.

It was no surprise to the audience when Mr Setter confirmed CPC would be looking at the Kidman and Co portfolio of properties up for sale.

“Beef partners like looking over the fence at each other. We’ve had a look before and we’ll look again,” was his straight answer.

When questioned further, he added that the company’s focus is on fertility gains and developing land to boost capacity on their 20 stations stretching from Western Australia to central and south west Queensland.

“We are continuing to grow,” he added, reminding listeners of the February purchase of Bunda Station in the Northern Territory.

The drought has impacted CPC’s bottom line, decreasing the 375,000 head herd by 20,000, they have been able to move stock to other properties.

Mr Setter said they had put a huge amount of work into maintaining their breeding herd, and that the welfare of their animals had been a priority.

The mining boom impact on labour availability had taught the company to put more energy into retaining staff.

“If young people are making a choice to come into the beef industry, we want to support that.”

CPC has participated in the Chinese market in the past and withdrawn, and how it takes part in the market in future is still being debated, according to Mr Setter.

He said the venture that took bone-in carcases to China taught them a lot, especially about picking the right partner, who would offer trust and quality.

“You’ve got to maximise a whole carcase, and some cuts were being devalued down,” he said.

A strategy for sectors was probably a better way to go, unless you were as big as Apple.

“We are currently re-assessing whether there’s value for us,” Mr Setter said.

“There’s a lot of capacity through feedlots already built but how we participate, we’re not sure.

“We’ll go back there but it has to devalue our risk.”

CPC’s parent company Terra Firma operates a myriad of businesses around the world – health care, service stations, hotels, solar and wind farms amongst them, amounting to $21 billion in assets, and Mr Setter said the association with other businesses in the private equity firm had been valuable.

“I’ve learnt about social media the hotel business for example, or about risk management from the health care side.”